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[naomikritzer]

Dr. Ferber (of "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" fame) is extremely controversial in parenting circles because he promotes a cry-it-out (CIO) technique to get your child to sleep better (i.e., through the night). There are endless mommy flame-wars on whether he's evil, how evil he is, how evil you are if you let your child CIO, what precisely constitutes CIO, whether you still count is evil if you put your child down for two minutes while you peed and she happened to fall asleep while you were doing that, etc., etc., etc.

I'm not getting into my opinion of CIO and associated controversies, but I do want to note that on the whole "sleep association" issue, he's so very right. (He says that if your baby has a particular sleep association -- being rocked, being nursed, being held and walked around -- when she wakes in the night, she'll want that again to go back to sleep.) Kiera normally goes to sleep while nursing. Last night, she wanted to be rocked while I sang her a lullabye, so that's what I did instead. When she woke up at 2 a.m., I brought her into bed and offered to nurse her. "BOOK!" she screamed. (The lullabye came out of a book.) Fortunately, I was able to buy her off by letting her hold the book while she nursed back to sleep.

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Molly leads a rich and varied fantasy life which I don't talk about much because it's also kind of complex, and frequently requires a longwinded preface which turns it from being a Cute Anecdote to an Extended Explanation with a cute anecdote as almost a P.S. But, here goes. You're probably familiar with BadgerBadgerBadger. Molly found the BadgerBadgerBadger site both funny and kind of freaky. (She likes PotterPotterPotter better.) She does, however, definitely like us to sing it to her, ideally with altered words. "Apple apple apple apple apple apple apple apple apple apple apple apple ORANGE ORANGE!" for instance. The other morning I was singing to her while buttoning her shirt, "Button button button" (etc.) with the "snake" being a zipper. ("Oohhhhhhhhh....it's a zipper!") She promptly decided that there was an imaginary zipper living upstairs trying to catch her and freeze her, and has brought up the zipper repeatedly, giggling every time. See? Rich and varied. Also kind of weird. And complicated to explain.

She also has an imaginary flashlight that she announces that she's using anytime we go somewhere at night, and most especially when we ride in Ed's car (which has a burned-out dome light). "It's kind of dark, but don't worry! I have my imaginary flashlight!" She'll also demand that you hold the hand that doesn't have an imaginary flashlight in it.

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

I have a friend whose child had an imaginary friend named Loki. After that, I'm not sure anything can be called weird.